Sandor Katz Fermentation: Coevolution, Culture and Community

Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 7:30pm
to 9:00pm

"Fermentation: Coevolution, Culture, and Community"
Fermentation is much bigger than delicious and nutritious foods and beverages. All life is evolved from bacteria; they are a fundamental context for all life. Microorganisms are present on all products of agriculture, and they quickly transform our food, either into rotting decomposition or celebrated delicacies, depending primarily upon environmental conditions. Successful coexistence with microbes in our midst is a biological imperative; ferments are human cultural manifestations of this essential biological fact. Ferments predate recorded history, and are found in all parts of the world. Like all aspects of food production, fermentation has largely disappeared from our kitchens and communities. By participating in food production and fermentation, we reclaim our food and with it power, dignity, and a complex web of biological, social, and economic relationships. Be part of the fermentation revival!

Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist. His book Wild Fermentation (2003), which Newsweek called “the fermenting bible,” and the hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught across North America and beyond, have helped to catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Katz has become for fermentation what Timothy Leary was for psychedelic drugs: a charismatic, consciousness-raising thinker and advocate who wants people to see the world in a new way.” His latest book, The Art of Fermentation (2012), was an immediate bestseller. A self-taught experimentalist, Katz lives in rural Tennessee. For more information, visit www.wildfermentation.com.